Snickerdoo

At the bookstore this weekend I browsed the vegan cookbooks, as I always do. There was only one I hadn’t seen before, and it didn’t inspire me to purchase it (as if I don’t have enough cookbooks to last a hundred years, anyway!), but there was one recipe that I was drawn to: the Snickeroo.

It is easy, few ingredients, but one of the ingredients was dark corn syrup. That made me pause. I don’t use corn syrup, normally. I suppose I could buy some, but then what? And do I really want to eat corn syrup?

I tweeted the question, what would make a good sub for dark corn syrup? I had several suggestions. Brown rice syrup, maple syrup, molasses, but the suggestion I decided to go with (via @gonepie) was to replace the regular sugar with brown sugar, and the corn syrup with rice syrup. Easy enough! Thanks to @veggiebex, @maryam, @kaisershahid, and @vk922 for the other various suggestions! I think they could all work, now that I’ve made them once. More on that later.

I seem to keep adding a “d” into the name, so this slightly modified version of the Food Allergy Mama’s Snickeroo has become the Snickerdoo. But don’t be fooled – I didn’t come up with the recipe, she did!

Add the rice syrup and brown sugar to a sauce pan and heat over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, add the nut butter, mix well. Combine the puffed rice with the pb/sugar mixture in a large bowl. Transfer to the pan and pack it down a bit.

Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave or on the stove top (remember to be careful: chocolate is easy to burn!), and then spread over the top of the rice/pb/sugar mixture. Let sit at room temperature until cool.

They’re easy and delicious! And, to my amazement, they aren’t all that sweet. They aren’t not sweet either, but there is definitely more room for sweetening, and for that reason I think that the various other suggestions could also be used, depending on how sweet your preference is. It could also depend on the nut butter you use – I used peanut butter, the natural (unsugared) kind.

I haven’t done any kind of in-depth analysis on the health comparison between the two, but knowing that none of my cookbooks call for corn syrup and some of them do call for brown rice syrup is reason enough for me to not want to buy corn syrup!

Quite possibly! However, don’t listen to me, I can’t actually remember what a whatchamacallit is, other than thinking it had the best name ever! Similar to the whatchamacallit or not, it would be delicious. Don’t forget to post your recipe once you come up with it!

I prefer the name snickerdoo! Glad they worked out. I think it is always best to avoid corn syrup as it is likely to be made from GMO corn. I can’t decide whether I would add coconut oil to the base or the topping — or both! Gotta add some in there somewhere, because they don’t look unbearably rich yet. Just super rich!

@TVV – I have to admit, I was drawn as much to how easy it was as to how good it looked! I was satisfied on both counts. And a bonus is that they are so rich that one batch is lasting quite a long time. Yay!

@Gone Pie – Thanks for your suggestion! Too funny that they don’t look rich enough. What do you think about adding caramel, as per trktos’ post? Bet that would add to the richness!